Miles George
, managing director of renewable energy outfit
Infigen Energy
, describes himself as a team player who surrounds himself with good people.

That ethos has helped him withstand some tough times at Infigen, a company which has survived the implosion of the Babcock & Brown empire, and has, in recent times, seen its share price plummet after a sale of its US assets fell through.

Infigen has wind farms in Australia, the US and Germany, and has put forward a proposal with solar energy player Suntech Power under the government’s Solar Flagships Program.

The company was born out of the Babcock & Brown investment house that spawned ailing infrastructure and utilities businesses Prime Infrastructure Holdings and utility group Alinta Energy. Called Babcock & Brown Wind Partners until April 2009, Babcock & Brown was previously Infigen’s manager and a large shareholder.

Separating from its troubled parent was a big challenge, a big learning experience and a big jump for Mr George, who had come up through the ranks at Babcock & Brown.

Mr George became a senior executive of Babcock & Brown in 1997, in its infrastructure and energy business. Before that he was a director of the project and structured finance division of AIDC, focusing on infrastructure equity investment. He studied at the University of Melbourne, gaining a Bachelor of Engineering and a MBA with distinction.

His involvement with Australian wind power began in 2000. Since then he has been involved in a slew of projects, including the development of the company’s first wind farm at Lake Bonney in South Australia.

In 2005, Mr George jointly led the team that put together and carried out the initial public offering and listing of Infigen’s business on the Australian Securities Exchange.

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During those periods, he helped the company ride out some torrid times.

In December 2008, Infigen split from Babcock & Brown. Before that the company had been a managed fund under the Babcock & Brown umbrella. When Infigen decided to separate from Babcock & Brown, it was completely dependent on its parent.

“When we were proposing to leave we had no accounting system, no HR system, no payroll, no IT system. All of that was all previously provided by Babcock & Brown," Mr George said.

That meant the Infigen team needed to pull together.

“From a personal perspective, I am extremely dependent on the senior management team here to be able to move from essentially a zero base of business services to a fully functioning independent business," he said.

Such experiences have helped established a team player culture at the renewable energy company.

“I think it’s part of the culture here, which has been very important in being able to make that transition, which is that we do operate as a team," he said.

“Although we have the usual management stratification and other things, organisation structure and processes and delegations of authority, and all those usual things that businesses have in terms of governance, the overriding culture is very much one of a team," Mr George said.

And becoming independent from Babcock & Brown made life easier for Mr George.

Under the old regime, Mr George was an employee of Babcock & Brown, so his reporting line was to the two Babcock & Brown directors on the fund’s board.

That became a more complicated situation when he became chief executive of what is now Infigen. Then, he had a responsibility to Infigen’s shareholders, but was still a Babcock employee, and reported within Babcock to an Infigen director.

“There’s conflicts of interest inherent in that structure because Babcock and Brown, as I said, had an interest to sell projects to Infigen, it provided financial advice and conducted other services for Infigen, so there was a natural conflict of interest and for me, personally, the impact is that managing those potential conflicts of interest took up a lot of time and a lot of effort that otherwise could have been directed at the business function," he said.

Now, heading an independent company able to decide its own destiny, Mr George is much more comfortable.

“Having a strong and fully independent board, and being able to refer to that independent board for advice on governance on other business things has been a great help to me since we separated from Babcock & Brown."

Mr George has been working hard to improve the perception of Infigen, after its management team lost credibility when the sale of its U.S. business fell through.

The company was criticised by investors and analysts for not giving enough warning that the sale was in trouble, after suggesting in early April the process was on track.

Infigen didn’t tell the market in April that second-round bids, received in March, were low because it was still running a competitive process, Mr George said in May, pointing out the company would have been talking against its own position if it had said the bids weren’t good.

At the indicative bid stage, Infigen might have been able to release some $400 million of cash. When the final bids came in, that number would have been $100 million or less.

Between when the indicative bids came in and the final bids were delivered, world leaders failed to strike a deal at last year’s UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen on global warming, sentiment on long term electricity prices in the U.S. turned bearish and the el nino weather pattern hit wind levels in the US. As a consequence the value of the bids plummeted.

That was a blow.

“It was very disappointing for us as well as for shareholders, that after such a process which had such promising prospect at the indicative bid stage, to cancel the process was obviously very disappointing," he said.

“Since that time we have canvassed views of shareholders and analysts who call us and talk to us about the business, what their thoughts were on our decision not to sell the US business and I’ll have to say, almost universally, it was agreed that the market conditions at that time in March of this year were not right to sell the major asset that we have, and it would have been the wrong decision to have sold at that time," he said.

Downtime

Mr George lives on a rural property with a few acres, and likes being out in the open. He is married with three daughters and loves being with his family. While he doesn’t ride, they are all keen equestrians and he backs them up – and has done so for the past 10 years. “I write the cheques and drive the float," he said.